Trash Day

Well if you are doing it right, everyday is trash day around here! The Germans are passionate about their trash and for us newcomers there is a definite learning curve to get it all figured out. I can't substantiate this for sure, but I have heard that Germans are number 1 in the world when it comes to recycling. AND there is a dirty little rumor that they think Americans lived a bloated and wasteful lifestyle.

German homes are way more compact than ours. If they have a large home it is because they built it "up" instead of "out". Their kitchens are extremely compact! They have fridges that our about half of the size of their American cousins. The dishwashers, washing machines and dryers all follow suite. And there is no such thing as Urban Sprawl here. City Limits are very defined and no one here lives in the suburbs of Parsberg.

I find this all to be very respectable and I couldn't wait to jump on the bandwagon (I also don't want to be fined for messing it up!). What I didn't expect is how difficult it would be to recycle and do it well. After reading everything the Army provided for me and reading even more online to make sure I got it right. I think I have it down.

If you are doing it right, you should have this many trash cans!

Back in the States, it is not unusual for my household to take out 2 bags of trash a day. Definitely one, but on many days, two. Here the regular trash is only picked up 2 times a month!! Did you read that right? TWO TIMES and the trash can provided is HALF THE SIZE. If we missed the trash pick up in the states, we were hurting!

But today, I am proud to say, that the Trash Truck visited and my can was only half full with items that can't be recycled. Who would have thought? And Trash is one of my top priorities when cleaning house and running errands. It has got to be done!

So what about the rest of the stuff that can be recycled? I keep it all in different bins and I have educated my family (more than once) on where to throw it away.

We have a bin for plastic and metal. So that include bottle caps, lids to jelly jars, chip bags, milk containers, etc. And they must be washed out, so I think nothing now of washing my trash so it won't stink. This is picked up ONCE A MONTH

We have a bin for clean paper. That would include cardboard on most food products, paperwork from school and Army, toilet paper rolls. This is picked up ONCE A MONTH

Another bin for glass. This is glass that you can't get a refund on. So jelly jars, wine bottles, etc. I love this bin!! As soon as it is full, I will put it in my car and go and find one of these.

Then one by one I get to throw my bottles in here and listen to them break! I LOVE IT!!! Good to do on a bad day.

Then I have crates of other types of glass.

We buy our beer and Pellegrino water in crates like this. You pour the contents of the bottle out and then return it to this crate. Once the crate is full of empty bottle, you need to return it to the grocery store which has a machine that looks like this.

You feed your crate of bottles in to this and then at the end it will print you out a receipt that you can use on your next purchase (or you can just get the money back at the register). On days where I have to return crates of bottles are days I am definitely not walking to the grocery store!

And lastly, there is the bio trash. This is where you put all food scraps that are not animal related. I guess garbage disposals are not big here but compost is! I bought one of these to help me out.

This stays on my counter top so when I am cooking all extra scraps are thrown in here. When we are done eating, what we didn't consume is scraped off the plates into this also. Then at least every other day, I take this outside to a small trash can and dump it. This is picked up every week.

One last bin. Household cleaners, aerosol cans and batteries. We don't have a lot of those things used up yet, so I haven't dealt with it. But I have to take those on post to dispose of.

Since moving here, it is nothing for me to dig in the trash and make sure everything is where it is supposed to be. We also have small trash cans in other rooms. I will regularly take clean trash out of them and make sure it gets in the right spot. And my family LOVES the impromptu classes I hold on the importance of putting the right trash in the right spot!

It actually makes me feel good to recycle- so it must be the right thing to do.